Educators embrace the teaching profession because they believe they can make a lasting contribution to the lives of young people. Specifically, they make a strong commitment to teach their students skills for life in academic, social, personal, and vocational areas. However, these goals can be seriously challenged when students display disruptive behavior, particularly noncompliance, in the classroom. Moreover, these aspirations can be significantly attenuated if these behaviors occur on a frequent basis.

Noncompliant behavior, such as refusal to follow directions, insubordination, defiance and oppositional behavior can cause serious disruption to the teaching-learning process in the classroom. These student behaviors significantly interrupt instruction for the teacher, other students, and for the individual student when the teacher has to spend excessive time addressing these problem behaviors. Noncompliant behavior can cause a substantial loss in instructional time and subsequently reduce student learning. In the more serious cases, noncompliant behavior can also seriously impact on administrator time in following up with the student and possibly the parents.

This book is designed as a resource for teachers, specialists (personnel charged with teacher support especially in the area of problem behavior), and behavior support teams (groups of educators responsible for developing interventions for students who display chronic problem behavior). There are two sections. In Section I the focus is on understanding noncompliant behavior. Chapter 1 addresses the seriousness and pervasiveness of noncompliant behavior and the negative outcomes experienced by involved students both during their school days and in later life. Chapter 2 presents information on how to define noncompliant behavior and to grasp its various and subtle forms displayed by students in the classroom. This understanding is taken further in Chapter 3, where details of procedures for systematically assessing noncompliant behavior are described. The components of this assessment provide the framework for analyzing noncompliant behavior leading to the development of systematic intervention plans. The overriding assumption is that if the reader has a solid understanding of noncompliant behavior, and can gather accurate assessment information, the teacher, specialist, and behavior support team will be in a strong position to develop effective intervention plans.

In Section II, strategies and procedural details are presented for developing and implementing interventions to establish cooperative behavior and reduce noncompliant behavior. These intervention plans are derived from information obtained from the systematic assessment procedures. In Chapters 4, 5, and 6, several strategies have been selected and described drawn from research and best practices for each component depicted in the assessment model. Chapter 7 presents information on guidelines for selecting specific strategies in designing an intervention plan. Case studies are also presented to provide illustrations of how the range of noncompliant behavior can be systematically targeted. The final chapter, Chapter 8, brings together the direct link between the functional behavioral assessment questions and corresponding pool of strategies for FBA components in a master chart or roadmap. A glossary of terms for the strategies is also provided for ease of recall for the reader.

The reader is referred to an appendix section at the back of the book, which contains copies of the forms, checklists and tables presented throughout the book. These appendices may be reproduced or adapted for personal use in the classroom, school, or district.